VII
At the end of those battles happened that surprising, audacious adventure in the Cambrai salient organized by the Third Army under General Byng, when on November 20, 1917, squadrons of tanks broke through the Hindenburg line, and infantry streamed through the breach, captured hundreds of guns, ten thousand prisoners, many villages and ridges, and gave a monstrous shock to the German High Command.
The audacity of the adventure lay in the poverty of manpower with which it was attempted and supported. The divisions engaged had all been through the grinding mill of Flanders and were tired men. The artillery was made up largely of those batteries which had been axle—deep in Flanders mud. It was clearly understood by General Byng and Gen. Louis Vaughan, his chief of staff, that Sir Douglas Haig could not afford to give them strong reserves to exploit any success they might gain by surprise or to defend the captured ground against certain counter-attacks. It was to be a surprise assault by tanks and infantry, with the hope that the cavalry corps might find its gap at last and sweep round Cambrai before the enemy could recover and reorganize. With other correspondents I saw Gen. Louis Vaughan, who expounded the scheme before it was launched. That charming man, with his professional manner, sweetness of speech, gentleness of voice and gesture, like an Oxford don analyzing the war correspondence of Xenophon, made no secret of the economy with which the operation would have to be made.
“We must cut our coat according to our cloth,” he said.
The whole idea was to seize only as much ground as the initial success could gain, and not to press if resistance became strong. It was a gamble, with a chance of luck. The cavalry might do nothing, or score a big triumph. All depended on the surprise of the tanks. If they were discovered before the assault the whole adventure would fail at the start.
They had been brought up secretly by night, four hundred of them, with supply-tanks for ammunition and petrol lying hidden in woods by day. So the artillery and infantry and cavalry had been concentrated also. The enemy believed himself secure in his Hindenburg line, which had been constructed behind broad hedges of barbed wire with such wide ditches that no tank could cross.
How, then, would tanks cross? Ah, that was a little trick which would surprise the Germans mightily. Each tank would advance through the early morning mists with a bridge on its nose. The bridge was really a big “fascine,” or bundle of fagots about a yard and a half in diameter, and controlled by a lever and chain from the interior of the tank. Having plowed through the barbed wire and reached the edge of the Hindenburg trench, the tank would drop the fascine into the center of the ditch, stretch out its long body, reach the bundle of fagots, find support on it, and use it as a stepping-stone to the other side. Very simple in idea and effect!
So it happened, and the mists favored us, as I saw on the morning of the attack at a little place called Beaumont, near Villers Pluich. The enemy was completely surprised, caught at breakfast in his dugouts, rounded up in batches. The tanks went away through the breach they had made, with the infantry swarming round them, and captured Havrincourt, Hermies, Ribecourt, Gouzeaucourt, Masnieres, and Marcoing, and a wide stretch of country forming a cup or amphitheater below a series of low ridges south of Bourlon Wood, where the ground rose again.
It was a spectacular battle, such as we had never seen before, and during the following days, when our troops worked up to Bourlon Wood and through the intervening villages of Anneux, Graincourt, Containg, and Fontaine Notre Dame, I saw tanks going into action and cruising about like landships, with cavalry patrols riding over open ground, airplanes flying low over German territory, and masses of infantry beyond all trench-lines, and streams of liberated civilians trudging through the lines from Marcoing. The enemy was demoralized the first day and made only slight resistance. The chief losses of the tanks were due to a German major of artillery who served his own guns and knocked out a baker's dozen of these monsters as they crawled over the Flesquieres Ridge. I saw them lying there with the blood and bones of their pilots and crews within their steel walls. It was a Highland soldier who checked the German major.
“You're a brave man,” he said, “but you've got to dee,” and ran him through the stomach with his bayonet. It was this check at the Flesquieres Ridge, followed by the breaking of a bridge at Masnieres under the weight of a tank and the holding of a trench-line called the Rumilly switch by a battalion of Germans who raced to it from Cambrai before our men could capture it, which thwarted the plans of the cavalry. Our cavalry generals were in consultation at their headquarters, too far back to take immediate advantage of the situation. They waited for the capture of the Rumilly switch, and held up masses of cavalry whom I saw riding through the village of Ribecourt, with excitement and exaltation, because they thought that at last their chance had come. Finally orders were given to cancel all previous plans to advance. Only one squadron, belonging to the Canadian Fort Garry Horse in General Seely's division, failed to receive the order (their colonel rode after them, but his horse slipped and fell before he caught them up), and it was their day of heroic folly. They rode fast and made their way through a gap in the wire cut by the troopers, and came under rifle and machine-gun fire, which wounded the captain and several men.